Economics is one of the most influential social science disciplines, with a high level of internal consent around a common theoretical and methodological approach to economic analysis. However, marginalised schools of thought have increasingly unified under the term “heterodox” economics, with their critical stance towards the “neoclassical mainstream” as common denominator. This has spawned debates among scholars about how to understand the nature of the mainstream-heterodoxy divide in economics.This thesis sets out to explain how such a common approach to science is generalised and stabilised in modern economics, and how this process is related to heterodoxy. Grounded in the sociology of science, it aims first to provide an empirical account of the mainstream-heterodoxy dynamics in Swedish economics, and second, to contribute to theory development. Drawing on the literature on distinct styles of reasoning in the history of science, I develop a theoretical framework of relational disciplinary styles of reasoning, which is used to analyse two bodies of empirical material from Swedish economics. The first is an in-depth interview study with researchers in economics, and the second is a document study of expert evaluation reports from the hiring of professors of economics at four of the top Swedish universities during 25 years. Through the two empirical studies, the fine-grained qualitative material provides an insight into the ways economists understand their discipline and the character of proper knowledge production.I argue that the mainstream-heterodoxy divide is fruitfully understood in terms of the institutionalised stabilisation of a disciplinary style of reasoning, and show how economists understand their scientific approach and its merits. The maintenance of the style of reasoning is the achievement of the thought collective of economists, where boundaries are constructed in relation to contesting heterodox economics and to other scientific disciplines. I show how the disciplinary style with its conception of good science and the notion of a core of the discipline is linked to the reproduction of disciplinary boundaries. I trace how this plays out through shifting quality evaluation practices, and show how top journal rankings have become a powerful judgement device which links the hierarchical ranking of top journals to the notion of a disciplinary core, and effectively functions as a mechanism of disciplinary stabilisation. In conclusion, I argue that these processes form a self-stabilising system in which the disciplinary style of reasoning and its boundaries is reproduced, with potential implications for how we understand intellectual dynamics and pluralism. (Less)

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Disciplined reasoning: Styles of reasoning and the mainstream-heterodoxy divide in Swedish economics

Contemporary debates on sustainability usually relies on standardised and normative categories, such as ‘social’ and ‘nature’, and on linear notions of time. This study explores a more complex perspective on the delicate borderlands between the ‘un-sustainable’ and the ‘sustainable’. A particular material and a particular place stand at the centre of attention: woollen Merino fibre on the South American grasslands. Being alert to activities around woollen fibre implies efforts to understand how the fibre forms part of larger wholes as it generates collective relations and communities. This focus foregrounds aspects of people’s careful balancing between sustainable and un-sustainable conditions. By drawing on fieldwork among sheep farmers, laboratory technicians, manufacturers, textile traders, artisans, artists and art collectors, the study shows that the idiosyncrasies of how people classify Merino wool include different kinds of interferences, here referred to as processes of displacements, dissonances, dissociations, and distortions. The classifications and their interferences also include the handling of coexisting and contradictory temporalities: rhythms, paces, cycles and intervals. These are vital and imperative yet often overlooked parts of holding together artefacts and worlds. The study demonstrates that the South American grasslands’ multispecies collectives and the wool, their qualities or how they sustain, can be better understood after attention has been paid to people’s practices of classification. To classify is not only to sort and order what is already there but a way to both make sense of and to generate worlds. Fibre formations thus refers to both the transformations that the wool undergoes, and the impact it has upon lives in its surroundings. By letting Merino fibre be the stable point – the site – and the smallest common denominator of each description, the study shows how variations of categorization morph and add to normative categories and to linear notions of time. Woollen fibre is found to be part of several larger wholes and, in a sense, to be larger than itself. This, in turn, contributes to recent reflections on the capacity of anthropological research and is intended as a tentative move towards an anthropology of un-sustainability.

Fibre Formations : Wool as an anthropological site

This dissertation is a conversation analytic examination of recurrent practices of interaction in medicalemergency calls. The study expands the analytical focus in past research on emergency calls ...

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Managing Medical Emergency Calls

This dissertation offers a theorisation of the ways in which the intellectual function is performed through various subject positions. In the thesis, a post-Marxist approach to discourse theory is used to address questions of discursive shifts, hegemony and the intellectual function. It is supplemented by a rhetorical political analysis in order to examine how practices and strategies involved in hegemonic struggles take place on a more fine-grained level of analysis. The theoretical argument is complemented through empirical work that analyses the medialised debate on privatisation in Sweden from 1988 to 1993. As a step in the theorisation process this empirical analysis applies elements of both post-Marxist discourse theory and rhetorical political analysis to shed new light on the intricacies of the intellectual function and the hegemonic processes in which it plays a key part. Using a post-Marxist terminology, the intellectual function is conceived broadly as the articulation and mediation of ideology, and analysed with the aid of conceptual devices derived from the rhetorical political analysis approach. Empirical analysis thus plays an active, constitutive role in the production of theory. This also implies that empirical analysis is not undertaken primarily as an end in itself, but rather because it is needed to support the theorisation process. Nevertheless, the analysis of the privatisation debate in Sweden elucidates important discursive changes that took place in this decisive period of recent Swedish history. The focus of the study is directed towards the shifts in ways of defining and speaking about the concept under contention (in this case, privatisation) in a relational setting of concepts and political positionings; the formation and performance of an intellectual function and the types of subject positions made available in the debate, and the rhetorical practices used to inhabit such positions; and the rhetorical and political strategies employed to achieve (relative) fixation of a particular definition of privatisation by making it (appear to be) commonsensical. The analysis shows how a common sense centred on the right to private ownership, is established in the privatisation discourse. By disentangling moral and efficiency-based arguments, the empirical analysis provides novel insights that contradict existing economistic assumptions about neoliberal politics and ideologies. By fleshing out the post-Marxist notion of an intellectual function, the study offers a way of conceptualising a post-foundationalist theory of intellectuals. Moreover, performances of the intellectual function are typologised into three ideal types: “experts”, “spokespersons”, and “public intellectuals”. The dissertation also points to processual changes in the representation of these ideal types in mainstream and alternative media. By analysing discursive practices of coalitions building and the articulation of political frontiers in the privatisation discourse, the empirical analysis elucidates constructions of unity and division among political subjects. What emerges from these processes is a new hegemonic order which supplants the previous hegemonic formation – which became the common enemy across political lines – the social democratic welfare state.

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Hegemony and the Intellectual Function: Medialised Public Discourse on Privatisation in Sweden 1988-1993

This work addresses the phenomenon of long-term, so-called ‘independent’ travelling, or backpacking, often to destinations described as the ‘third world’. It regards backpacker journeys as arenas for identity work, for expressing individuality and a ‘strong character’. Rather than merely being a parenthetic detour in time and space a backpacker’s trip to the tropics can be understood as a creative effort by the individual to regain the control over time and space thought to be lost in places travellers call home. Yet, at the same time, backpacking reproduces structures of power, through (re)constructing the image of a ‘primitive other’ upon which much of a successful ‘western identity’ rests. The success is, however, not only dependent upon inventing and encountering ‘primitive’ others but also upon the gender of the traveller as well as the competence in mastering manifestations of adventure and risk. The work argues, for instance, that stereotype expectations of femininity (and masculinity) make female ‘adventurism’ into a challenge beyond the actual (or faked) ordeals encountered on the road. Adventurous women are forced to negotiate and balance between expectations placed upon them as (non-adventurous) females and as adventurous travellers. The arguments rest upon the ontological and epistemological conviction that individuals are creative, making the most out of the tools for identity work which society supplies them with. However, in the process of individual self-articulation, structures are both maintained and altered. Consequently, it is through studying individuals and their products/expressions (such as media texts or choice of clothing, food or ‘proper’ transport) that information can be gathered concerning individual thoughts and actions and the structures within which these are manifested. Such an undertaking has been accomplished within this project by means of a qualitative, ethnographically influenced approach, including interviews with backpackers, observations in backpacker areas and analysis of travel media.

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Taking Time and Making Journeys: Narratives on Self and the Other among Backpackers

Many of Sweden’s municipal districts show a population decline as well as an uneven population distribution. This pattern is neither desirable nor socially sustainable. Sustainable development is a well-known term often discussed from an ecological perspective. At the same time it is established that social and ecological sustainability are closely linked in several ways. In this dissertation social sustainability is studied. The term includes demographic and socio-economic factors, tradition and culture, technical structure, as well as power. Socially sustainable development, in this context, refers to the ability of a municipality to achieve and maintain a desirable developmental pattern. It also includes the ability of a municipality to handle crises, such as dramatic economic fluctuations and other societal changes. The overall aim of this study is to identify the underlying factors that influence the socially sustainable development in municipalities. All through this study, the municipalities of Vastervik and Varberg are used as empirical examples. The study is formulated around three main questions. The first question concerns the importance of a municipality’s previous development patterns – for the current situation as well as for any possible future developments. The second question deals with the local identity and highlights factors that attract or hamper development in the local area. The third and final question refers to how local civil servants and citizens perceive their own community’s potential for development, as well as which developmental strategies they perceive in the current municipal activities. To answer these three questions, Vastervik and Varberg have been studied through the use of historical documents and statistical material, and through interviews with both municipal local civil servants and residents. Theories of various aspects of local and regional development such as demographic patterns, society structures, local identity, and social capital are used. This study has identify several types of factors to pay attention to, as municipalities try to bring about and maintain a socially sustainable development. With insight into these factors the municipalities have a better basis for working out a procedural plan of action. Still, to bring about fruitful change it is crucial that the actors involved clearly define and reflect on their goals of a “sustainable development.”

Hållbar utveckling, samhällsstruktur och kommunal identitet : en jämförelse mellan Västervik och Varberg

Det talas ofta om att forsoka uppna en hallbar utveckling med utgangspunkt i ett naturvetenskapligt perspektiv. Samhallsvetenskapliga aspekter som tar upp de sociala, ekonomiska och samhallspolitiska perspektiven ar sallan forekommande. Nar man exempelvis vill uppna en hallbar utveckling i en stad eller kommun maste man ta hansyn till manga dimensioner, inte endast de ekologiska forhallandena utan aven forhallanden som befolkningens struktur och forandring over tid, ekonomiska system samt social, kulturell och polistisk organisering. Samtidigt som ekologisk och social hallbarhet star i nara relation till varandra, ar det viktigt att skilja dem at. Detta ar en forstudie om socialt hallbar samhallsutveckling, och har som syfte att presentera ett satt att analysera perspektiv pa social hallbarhet samt att ge exempel pa hur detta perspektiv kan anvandas for att i nagra aspekter forsta hur samhallen utvecklas och forandras i skilda riktningar. De empiriska exemplen i analysen ar tva svenska kommuner, Varberg och Vastervik. (Less)

Erika Blücher

Papers

Hållbar utveckling, samhällsstruktur och kommunal identitet : en jämförelse mellan Västervik och Varberg

Perspektiv på social hållbarhet i Varberg och Västervik